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SAMP stands for ‘Sustainable Airport Master Plan’. It looks like someone at the Port of Seattle (POS) has decided it would be a fun joke to add the word ‘sustainable’; maybe they were bored, maybe they wanted to imply this master plan would show meaningful environmental stewardship, moderation so as to not over-consume, etc; or, maybe the Port of Seattle just wants to test and see how stupid we are.

Let’s be clear: there is nothing at all sustainable about commercial aviation. Even in a country as ‘advanced’ and ‘wealthy’ as the U.S., only a small fraction of people do anymore than one air trip per year. During each of our personal air trips, we are individually consuming more fossil fuels and at a higher rate of consumption than we do in any other civilized human activity (war and arson do not count, OK?). So, it is a sick joke for POS or anyone to try and brand a new product (their latest round of airport master plan documentation) as good for the environment. Frankly, it is way too much like FAA’s spin on NextGen: claiming that, by using precision routes and automated flights, they might reduce CO2 emissions … while carefully NOTstating that the reductions would only happen by letting the airlines turn lower and closer to the runways, increasing impacts under both departures and arrivals.

Some Background on POS & KSEA:

The Port of Seattle has been brutally destroying local quality of life, with a relentless push to over-expand their one airport property, Sea-Tac [KSEA]. People are suffering from sleep loss, polluted air, and intrusive noise under repetitive flight paths narrowed via NextGen’s reliance on autopilot navigation.

Shortly after the 2012 announcement by Delta Airlines, that they were creating a new hub at KSEA, takeoff and landing operations began to soar; in fact, Sea-Tac has seen the most rapid growth in the U.S., with annual total operations climbing 31% from 2013 to 2017. Many people are understandably upset, especially this time of year, when backyard gardening and other pleasant activities are, well, not just unpleasant but even unhealthy. There is something not too tasty about barbecuing burgers while smelling jet fuel and aviation exhaust.

People have been clamoring for a cap on operations at KSEA, and demanding a real effort to develop alternate airport facilities to serve the Puget Sound area. This idea especially applies to air cargo, in no small part because people are sick and tired of being woken up by multiple Asia-bound cargo 747s that take off between 1AM and 4AM pretty much every night. But, again, since Sea-Tac is POS’s only airport, they have a vested interest to stop all efforts to shift activities elsewhere. They do not want to lose any federal grants that flow each year from the AIPgravy train.

The Port of Seattle is like an invasive and noxious weed, but actually much worse; unfortunately, they cannot just be dispatched with an herbicide or shovel. They do not belong here, yet they have powers that define local quality of life. They are not held accountable. They parasitize in multiple ways: taking mandatory taxes from homeowners, grabbing land around the airport, and sucking the oxygen from the air so no other airports can possibly emerge to compete with Sea-Tac. This is a troubling reality in U.S. commercial aviation today: just like with banks, pharma, grocers, and all other industries, political forces are aiding intensive and very destructive concentration. We see very few airlines now, and the bulk of their route systems are funneled through about a dozen main hub airports in the entire nation.

POS’s Latest Propaganda Exercise

A SAMP presentation was given at Federal Way. Attending were Clare Gallagher (POS Public Affairs Director, Capital Projects Delivery), Arlyn Purcell (Aviation Director of Environment & Sustainability), and Ryan Calkins (a POS Commissioner). Word is that Commissioner Calkins did not stay, so it was Gallagher and Purcell doing the actual presentation. Here is an embed video.

Below is a copy of the 16-slide PDF presented by POS. It is loaded with spin, not least being on page three, where a chart shows the huge growth from 2013-2017, but the title states, “Sea-Tac growth tracks with regional growth.” Such bullshit. The chart shows clearly passenger numbers growing far faster than local population. BTW, the reason is simple: with both Alaska and Delta setting business models to maximize profits by flying more and more people through KSEA (not departing there, not arriving there… just using the airport as a short stopover), many more flights must be handled each hour. In other words, all the added noise and pollution are aimed at narrowly benefiting these two airlines.

Also, be sure to notice the figure on slide two, where POS states 69.4% of passengers start or end their flights at Sea-Tac. First off, this means even their own numbers show a substantial 30.6% of passengers only pass through. But, consider this, too. POS’s figures are almost certainly incorrect. With online ticketing, where each of us goes to a website and clicks away to set up our personal air trip, it is now possible for many more passengers to arrive on one airline and then depart an hour or two later on another airline. Online self-ticketing is the dominant method now, and such tickets will not reflect us as a pass-through; in fact, it these tickets show us as both a ‘destination’ (arriving passenger) and ‘origin’ (departing passenger). It is quite possible that, in 2017, anywhere from 40% to 50% or more of Sea-Tac passengers never even left the terminal.

Click on the image below for a scrollable view; the PDF file may be downloaded.

Other Resources:

click here for Steve Edmiston’s ten questions submitted in writing (Steve was unable to attend, but the questions are outstanding … the sort of questions elected officials – including POS commissioners – are reliably failing to ask.).

More details to ponder about FAA’s latest tantrum: their refusal to communicate with Marylanders because the good Governor has filed a legal challenge against FAA. Sheesh.

Washington Post followed up on the Baltimore Sun news story. (click here for the source article, click here for an aiRchived version) The piece was by Michael Laris. There is a common and consistent problem with articles by the mainstream media, including Washington Post. In the middle of this article, a paragraph implying NextGen benefits is inserted, but none of the alleged benefits are supported by any real data. That is to say, the suggestion of addressing congestion fails against the reality that total airport operations (takeoffs and landings) at the main passenger airline airports have actually declined 14% between 1989 and 2017; in other words, the only ‘congestion’ is accommodation of airlines who ‘demand’ that a select few airports become superHubs. (click here for a 3-page PDF analysis; the combined data showing the 14% decline is at the bottom of page 3) And, as for efficiency, the only ‘gains’ are potentially realized by subverting the environmental review process (e.g., liberally applying the CatEx) to impose highly impactful routes with turns lower and closer to airport runways.; in other words, FAA is orchestrating a wholesale dismissal of environmental concerns.

There’s another important detail to consider, about the Baltimore-Washington airport. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), Southwest is by far the dominant airline at KBWI, with nearly 69% of passengers. (click here for BTS website, click here for an aiRchived copy of the KBWI airport report) So, if FAA imposes changes that increase both impacts and airline profit margins, Southwest is the key player who could, in a very neighborly way, advocate on behalf of impacted residents. When is the CEO of Southwest Airlines going to stand up and protect community quality-of-life and health, by telling FAA to fix these new routes? If Southwest did this, they would stand to build even greater customer loyalty. That, coupled with their near-monopoly at KBWI (and dozens of other U.S. airports, BTW!), is always a good business move.

Alternatively, it is like the spoiled brat kid who, seeing his failure to get his way, abruptly takes his toys and leaves the sandbox.

Yes, this is today’s FAA.

A few years ago, FAA implemented NextGen changes that are destroying neighborhoods under heavily travelled repetitive flight segments. When people in Maryland had enough, they organized. Part of their organization was to accept FAA’s preferred process, creating a community roundtable, filled with concerned volunteers.

Now, the game plan for roundtables (and other aviation citizen-committees) includes lots of rigging. Be sure their work product conforms with what FAA/industry want to see. Assert some control. For example, FAA and the airport authority make sure plenty of pro-aviation participants ‘volunteer’ to be a part of the group. Also, the agendas for at least a year are stacked with sleep-inducing program scraps, long and boring sessions sharing koolaid glasses filled with technobabble and irrelevant metrics like ‘dNL’. Despite these shenanigans, most groups do seat at least one or two real activists. The kind who will not and do not give up. And, as happened in Maryland, sometimes real support is gained from local and state elected officials.

So, what’s going on here? Just another FAA temper tantrum. This time because the good Governor and his Attorney General took FAA to court, to protect Maryland’s people.

Click on the image below for a scrollable view; the PDF file may be downloaded.

Now, how about a few questions:

At what level of FAA was this decision made? This is a heavily top-down bureaucracy, to the point where a Deputy Regional Administrator doing as Ms. Stanco did was only following orders. So, how about if FAA produces all the records that flesh out why this decision was made, and who really made it?

What level of outrage will we see from our federal elected officials? Will any of them demand FAA end their tantrum? Will any of them demand full transparency and accountability, including production of all records (see #1 above)?

When will our Congress step up and do their job, serving the people? When will local communities become re-empowered, to the point where they can manage capacity at their local airport, guarding against excessive airline hubbing and scheduling?

Late last year, an excellent article by Barbara Castleton was added here, in the ai-Rchives. A couple weeks ago, quite a few people started sharing this article at various social media sites related to airport impacts.

The November 2017 aiREFORM Post included a scrollable PDF copy, with footnotes added. Well, six months later, we decided to take a fresh new look at Barbara’s article, relate it to what FAA has done since, and create a new version, with new footnotes added. Of course, we did NOT look at the old footnotes until everything was finished. It is interesting to see how little has changed, and yet, too, how much more clearly the NextGen impact issues appear to be coming into a sharp focus.

Click on this link to view the Post from last November; click on the black pop-out button on the scrollable PDF below (upper right corner) to read the latest analysis:

SeaTac [KSEA] has been the fastest growing U.S. commercial airport in recent years, largely due to a 2012 decision by Delta to build a hub there. Here’s a JPEG showing KSEA annual operations and trends for each year, from 1991 through 2017:

(click on image to view the source table, which includes FAA ATADS data for 533 U.S. airports)

The data clearly reflects the operational history of KSEA. This is an airport where there was a former near-monoploy by Alaska Airlines, which is now expanding into a duopoly, with TWOairlines using it for hub operations. Notice the growth in flight numbers after 2012, following the Delta business decision. But notice also how operations at this airport declined by nearly a third, from 2000-2012. Think a bit about these sizable ups and downs: do they reflect strong swings in the local economy and population, or do they merely represent airline business decisions?

Now, ponder this concept, too: does ‘consumer demand’ drive airline business actions, or do airline business actions drive consumer demand? Is it fair to say that the entire goal of airline marketing is to stimulate more consumer demand, and ever-higher passenger mileage consumption?

Ask yourself this: regarding the demand for flying in the Seattle area (…and this is an attractive area, which has drawn many new residents from around the world), did ‘consumer demand’ DECLINEthat much during the 2000-2012 timeframe, and has ‘consumer demand’ for flying by Seattle-area residents grown as massively as airport operations after 2012? In other words, is it inappropriate and misinformational for airlines, the Port of Seattle, and FAA to declare that ‘passenger demand’ is driving the current impactful hub growth, when the true driver is ‘corporate/airline demand’? Check out this screencap from page 8 of a recent FAA document (FAA’s CATEX… more about that later in this Post). If you spend any time looking at press releases by airlines and the Port of Seattle, you will find the same misrepresentations consistently repeated, all aimed at tricking readers into believing ‘consumer demand’ is driving this growth. Wouldn’t it be more accurate and truthful for the industry players to precisely attribute these hub operational changes to airline corporate decisions? Shouldn’t they instead brag about their marketing savvy and their ability to manipulate consumers, to create higher (or lower) rates of consumption? Should the industry players be more transparent, noting how when assets are reallocated from a declining hub to their latest new hub, we end up with economic decline and stagnation in the former?

The bottom-line is this: some airports grow excessively, while other airports seemingly whither away. Further evidence and examples can be viewed at the full 1991-2017 data collection for all tower airports (533 different airports, in this table). Do your own analysis for your own region, but be sure to take a closer look at the airports within the rustbelt centered on Ohio … from Detroit to Buffalo to Pittsburgh to Memphis to St. Louis and back to Detroit. Within this large region, at even the busiest airports, operational declines have averaged well over 50% from peak traffic years. And, many airport hubs have been outright abandoned.

What gives here?

Under the hub-and-spoke business model, commercial passenger operators maximize profits if they theoretically fly an infinite number of passengers into a hub airport at the same moment, have the passengers instantly sort out gate-to-gate into all the parked airplanes, and then depart all at the same instant. Of course, airports cannot be this efficient, and safety rules restrict aircraft flow rates, as both arrival and departure streams typically require around one minute spacing between consecutive flights. So, the next best thing for the airport and airlines (but certainly NOT for sleep-deprived and lung-impacted residents in the airport community!) is to tweak the rules in a way that maximizes ‘runway throughput’.

An example of this rule-tweaking is the use of diverging departure headings. At SeaTac, FAA took this to an extreme when they imposed routine 90-degree left turns immediately after takeoff, for Horizon Q400 turboprops heading south during North Flows. These departures impacted residents in Burien, the community at the northwest corner of KSEA. After concerns were raised (including legal engagement), FAA backed down early last year, removing an automated turn coordination from the tower-TRACON letter of agreement (also known as the ‘SEA-S46 LOA’). That should have been the end of this, right? Well, it was not. Instead, under new Regional Administrator David Suomi, FAA spent more than a year internally discussing and drafting papers to reinstate automated turns over Burien. The culmination of all that FAA effort (and, yes, we all paid for it!) is a 51-page CATEX document titled “Categorical Exclusion for Letter of Agreement Update to Automate a 250° Westerly Turn for Southbound Turboprops When Seattle – Tacoma International Airport is Operating in North-Flow Between the Hours of 6 am and 10 pm.” Read that title to yourself again, slowly and carefully, and try to make sense of it. All of this is just to formalize a written agreement between the tower and the radar controllers, so that the turns are automated, instead of coordinated verbally (push a button down, state a few words, and get concurrence … typically takes 2-3 seconds total) on a case-by-case basis. And, the automation discards the safety element of a diligent analysis of the traffic picture for each coordination event. Anyway, here is a copy of FAA’s PDF:

Click on the image below for a scrollable view; the PDF file may be downloaded.

Like its title, this document is a doozy. Spend a little time studying it and you will see the extremes FAA goes to so as to enable excessive airport expansion. Page after page, lacking in substance, heavy on repetitive ‘safety’ and ‘efficiency’ soundbites, none of which are substantiated. If a particular detail or two really grab you, and you have an insight or a question, please email the aiREFORM administrator so we can share that on (odds are high, if you read something as puzzling or shocking, others will read it the same way, too). And, by the way, don’t waste your time trying to search this FAA PDF, because FAA scanned it to be unsearchable. I.e., although this captured agency claims to be engaging the community on matters such as early turns over Burien, in truth they are knowingly reducing the value of tools (such as this 51-page CATEX document) that concerned citizens need to carefully study). This trend, away from searchable PDFs, has been observed in FAA’s FOIA responses; whereas in the past nearly all PDF FOIA response documents were searchable, in time nearly all have become non-searchable.

The Dark Side of So-Called ‘Collaboration’

When two parties conspire in a way that adversely impacts a third party, we have collusion. In an age of propaganda, when collusion happens between aviation parties such as FAA, airport authorities, and airlines, they just call it ‘collaboration’. The true and unspoken purpose of their so-called ‘collaboration’ is to achieve a consistency in their soundbites. The early turns over Burien are an example of this ‘collaboration’. Another example is how these same players routinely claim the excessive growth at SeaTac is to meet customer demand. The short answer to that claim is, well, ‘Bullshit!’. Frankly, ‘demand’ is just a lame and misrepresentative excuse; the real cause of extreme over-expansion at airports is greed by the aviation players. And let’s be clear: it is not just the airlines, but also the airport authorities and the FAA. There is plenty of collusion to go around.

Here’s some data that proves the above point. It offers data from three Delta hub airports that have been scaled down, and shines a light on the downsizing of aviation in Middle America:

Click on the image below for a scrollable view; the PDF file may be downloaded.

Conclusion:

This data reflects the harsh reality that today, in the U.S., FAA serves the airlines with a propaganda line, trying to sucker taxpayers into believing passenger demand creates impact problems at places like Seattle, Boston, Long Island, Maryland, and Charlotte. This is blatantly false, and most people at FAA know this. Hub concentration is NOTdriven by consumer demand; no, airline greed is driving hub concentration, at great cost to local communities.

Congress needs to demand FAA serve all of us, not just the airlines and airport authorities. FAA is out of control and needs to be reigned in, and must not be allowed to continue operating as the captured regulator it has become.

There is now a newly-completed and extensive collection of searchable/downloadable PDFs with valuable information on U.S. airports. All data was collected from online sources, either FAA or vendors who do outsource work for FAA.

Many of the tables are grouped by state and ranked by a factor such as enplanements. Alaska is top of the list, and a huge aviation state, so be sure to scroll down a few pages to see Alabama and the other states where NextGen abuses are causing so many problems (Massachusetts, Maryland, New York and Washington are good studies).

Here is a short index, with links:

FAA Enplanement Data 2004-2016 — Ranked listing of all 844 Airports with 100+ enplanements in 2016; shows enplanement figures for each airport, for each year available online-2016 (45p)

ATADS Compilation — All key data for each ATADS airport (those with FAA-ATC, contract-ATC, and some military-staffed); one page per airport shows a table for each year, from 1991-2017; also shows decline from Peak Years (533 airports)

Much more will follow, as these resources make it easier to expose how deeply FAA is captured, in service of industry players. Readers are encouraged to spend some time studying parts of this data collection; if you see something that really jumps out (for waste, abuse of authority or outright fraud by FAA) please share it on.

UPDATE, 4/13/2018: — correction to original posting… ATC staffing data was inadvertently not included. The Consolidated Airport Data for 844 Airports table has been updated, and one more table has been added (the more extensive data table showing annual ATC staffing for 263 FAA-staffed towers).

Airlines and airport authorities have millions to spend and all the time they want, to manipulate citizen panels and elected representatives. A concerned citizen, on the other hand, typically is allowed a mere 2-minutes to make their points.

The fastest growing commercial aviation impact zone in the U.S. today is around SeaTac [KSEA]. Steve Edmiston, a multiple-times cancer survivor, is doing an outstanding job framing his 2-minutes for the industry-serving Port of Seattle. Check his latest video out here:
See also this article in the b-town blog, VIDEO: Local Activist Steve Edmiston’s third ‘Briefing’ to Port of Seattle, which includes links to the previous two 2-minute briefings. Watch for more 2-minute briefings, all year long, and take a look at ‘The Briefing Project‘ Facebook page.

By the way, I came to know Steve a year ago, when we worked together on the QSPS ‘Fight the Flight 101’ Community Forum. A lot of work went into creating the ‘Dissecting Nextgen’ presentation. One year later, the archived PDF copy of the presentation is still packed with information to help us better understand how FAA and industry (including airport authorities) are destroying communities with NextGen … all for money.

It is that time of year, when FAA again parades out a 20-year forecast to prop up agency spending. These forecasts are notorious for being routinely exaggerated, i.e., robustly unrealistic, but the pro-spending bias keeps happening, since the exaggerations work well to dupe the public.

The opening line is revealing; compare this statement (“…All indicators show that air travel in the United States is strong…”) with FAA’s own data, which has been compiled into the table below.

This table shows combined total tower operations for all of the 500+ FAA and contract control towers, as documented in ATADS. Note that total operations peaked in 1999, and have fallen 26% since. The decline has gone on for decades, and has been steady; there is no concrete sign of a reversal.

Note also a paragraph deep in the FAA news release, justifying further expansion of infrastructural spending, on the weak FAA assumption that total airport operations will rise 19% in the next 20 years (from 51.0 million in 2018 to 60.5 million in 2038). Think about it; airport operations cannot even keep up with the positive growth rate of our national population. The data is clear: this industry has been declining. And, yes, the new forecast truly is based on FAA’s ‘assumption’, that a downward-flat trend for two decades will suddenly inflect upward.

The RPM metric is not a valid metric for industry growth. As the few remaining airlines continue to adjust schedules with increased hub concentration, passengers end up flying LONGER flights with added legs (origin-to-hub-to-destination, and even origin-hub1-hub2-destination, instead of origin-direct-destination). This increases RPM totals. If a routing via the Atlanta hub adds 24% to the total flight distance, RPMs also increase by 24%. The fastest growing hub right now is Seattle; when Delta sells tickets for passengers between California and the Midwest or East Coast, more and more itineraries end up flying via KSEA. Likewise, as FAA continues to over-accommodate airline excessive hubbing on the East Coast, we will see RPM increases on trips to the West Coast out of Boston, the NYC airports, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Reagan National.

Here’s another piece of spin, from the fifth paragraph of the News Release: “Air Traffic Modernization is rapidly moving towards satellite navigation technologies and procedures which will continue to allow enhanced navigation for more aircraft….”The truth is, there has been no rapid modernization because most of the GPS system was implemented in the mid-1990s! Also, the so-called ‘enhanced navigation’ is potentially a valuable improvement, but it is consistently rendered worthless by FAA’s failure to manage capacity, such as by imposing hourly flow limits. In other words, so long as FAA continues to allow airlines to over-schedule at a handful of airline-chosen hubs, ATC will have to continue to issue delays … as we routinely see at KBOS, KJFK, KLGA, KDCA, KSEA, and elsewhere. Using online flight tracking programs, we see thousands of delays everyday, in the form of gate holds, long taxi-out times due to congestion, turns and loops during the enroute/cruise segment, extended patterns to sequence arrivals via radar vectors, and long taxi-in times due to congestion. If FAA does not change their strategy, these delays will only grow.

The news release notes that there were 840.8 million domestic enplanements in 2017. If we fly a nonstop ticket from our origin to an airport destination, it will count as one enplanement, but ONLY if it is a direct nonstop flight. If we fly via a hub, or a series of stops, the number of enplanements increases (one enplanement per takeoff segment). Thus, a figure of 840.8 million enplanements in 2017 sounds like a big number, but actually means no more than 420.4 out-and-back ‘trips’. With more data, we could establish an estimate that is likely even fewer than 300 million actual full ‘trips’ per year, once we factor out extra trip legs (such as via hubs).

The news release also cites a 1.7% annual growth rate estimate for domestic enplanements, but how much of this will be due to increased hubbing? Even the simplest hub-related flights (e.g., outbound routed origin-HUB-destination, and return trip routed destination-HUB-origin) tallies four enplanements, which is roughly double the national annual average. If Delta, JetBlue, and others intensify hubbing, we can end up with an annual growth rate far exceeding the national population growth rate. But, with more hubbing, this would actually be less energy-efficient; lengthened flight distances and more stops would INCREASE fossil fuel consumption, having an even higher impact on climate and communities.

On average, U.S. citizens fly less than one commercial passenger air trip per year. And, importantly, some of us travel a whole bunch, many times per week. So, in this annual forecast, we really need FAA to go deeper with the data and attempt to accurately define just how elite air travel is. What percentage of our national population did not fly at all in 2017? And what is the trend year to year; are more people responding to climate change concerns by electing to travel less, or not at all? It could actually be that airlines serve an elite few U.S. citizens, more so than the larger ‘general public’. Considering the intensive fuel consumption (and impacts, upon climate change as well as health and neighborhood quality of life), it would be an appropriate national policy to stop subsidizing this industry and shift costs away from communities and onto the airlines and passengers; it would also be an appropriate national policy to impose a fee structure that discourages excessive flying by one passenger (e.g., no tax on the first two roundtrips per year, a steep tax for the third thru fifth roundtrip each year, and a very steep tax for subsequent roundtrips).

Aviation is the most intensive fuel-consumption activity in our modern lifestyle. It has enormous negative impacts, not only upon climate change, but also upon public health and neighborhood quality of life. Efforts to increase airport capacity do not reduce these impacts; they INCREASE these impacts.

Near the bottom of the news release, a paragraph glows about how this annual forecast is the ‘industry-wide standard’. More accurately, this annual forecast is a propaganda tool issued by a captured regulator, in collaboration with industry players and their lobbyists. It is disinformational, an improper use of public monies.

Activists in the Boston area are gaining support from elected officials, toward a health study that needs to be done OUTSIDE FAA. Here is a graphic; please enlist the support of YOURelected officials, too.

(click on image to view the FairSkiesNation FaceBook page)

Speaking of needed Congressional actions, below is the current aiREFORM wishlist. Every one of these proposals is doable. We just need elected officials who believe in empowered citizens, and who are driven to clean up the bureaucratic waste and abusive authority found in over-matured (and captured) federal regulators, like FAA.

Eleven FAA Reforms Our U.S. Congress Needs to Demand:

For starters, Congress needs to pass legislation that will achieve the following:

arrange with the National Academies Division of Health and Medicine for a consensus report of existing study findings on the harmful health impacts of the NextGen technology.

remove from FAA the authority to evaluate, manage, and reduce noise and air pollution impacts by aviation, and place those authorities under EPA or another non-FAA agency.

Further, Congress needs to pass legislation that will direct FAA to:

fully implement all noise and air pollution impact recommendations, from the non-FAA authority, unless FAA can clearly document that implementation would create a hazard (in other words, prioritize aviation commerce BELOW aviation impacts).

remove incentives to over-expand hub airports, by phasing out passenger facility charges and allowing (even encouraging) divestiture of excess airport lands for local non-aviation use. PFC’s need to be capped at $3.00, then phased out; AIP regulations need to be reformulated to end the current coddling of industry. The current regulations create perverse incentives to grow excessively and operate inefficiently, while also making it that much harder for other communities to have viable commercial airports.

draft revisions to airport funding regulations and other FAA documents, that empower local officials with the right and duty to engage local citizens in democratically deciding how their local airport may be used (to include allowing night-time curfews, reduced flow rates, banning some aircraft types for safety reasons, etc.).

advocate for LOCAL authority and LOCAL problem-solving (thus, support all locally designed solutions, even if they reduce total air commerce at that location, so long as the solutions are non-discriminatory and do not create a valid safety hazard).

create clear regulations – and aggressively enforce them! – to end helicopter thrill rides sold as ‘air tours’ (neither the recent NYC tour crash, nor the earlier Grand Canyon crash, should have happened … and they would NOThave happened, if FAA was truly regulating this industry).

create a program that makes flight data easily accessible online, so as to maximize operator transparency for repetitive flight operations; the goal should be to protect citizens against abuse by rogue operators, and to empower citizens in achieving real local control.

And lastly, in relation to climate change, Congress needs to direct FAA to:

impose an environmental impact tax on leaded GA fuels (again, make it very steep, and direct all revenues to environmental programs, such as the non-FAA office charged with evaluating, managing, and reducing aviation noise and air pollution impacts).

replace most of the current aviation ticket taxes and other fees with:

a stepped ticket tax for commercial passenger seats (free, first two one-way trips or first roundtrip; single fee next few trips (e.g., roundtrips #2 and #3 in a year); double fee trips beyond that (e.g., roundtrips #4 and higher in a year).

UPDATE, 3/18/2018: — A discussion of item #1 of this Post was held at QSPS, and includes valuable insight by Cindy Christiansen; she explains the need for ‘independence’ and the nature of the proposed ‘study’, and also provides a link to a NAS Mission statement. Click here for the QSPS FaceBook discussion.

The first StART Meeting was held at KSEA, on February 28th. Vashon Island activist David Goebel posted a great write-up at the NORNP.org website (click here for aiRchived copy). It also is clear that Sheila Brush asked some great questions, to try and help Port of Seattle (PoS … perfect acronym, no?!?) officials drill down into the real impacts of this major airport, which appears stuck in a mode of selling out to profit-seeking by Alaska and Delta airlines.

As I understand his story, it was around two decades ago that David purchased land near the north end of Vashon Island, hoping to enjoy the bucolic setting a ferry ride away from the city. Those dreams crashed when FAA implemented the HAWKZ arrival and accommodated Delta’s hub development, creating nearly nonstop arrival streams at lower altitudes. There are many nice places to call home, around Seattle, but sadly airline over-accommodation is destroying them.

David offered this closing comment:

“…something that struck me as sadly ironic is that it was really quiet in the conference room; I didn’t hear any planes. This is in stark contrast to my cabin on Vashon Island, where as often as every two or three minutes they drown out all the sounds of nature, destroying the reason I moved there 20 years ago…..”

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